Mikel Arteta's Unorthodox Methods for Team Resilience

Mikel Arteta does not wait for chaos to find his team. He goes looking for it.

The Arsenal manager has lifted the curtain on the unusual challenges he sets his players – from delaying pre-match meals to cranking up the heat in the dressing room – all designed to harden his squad for nights when everything goes wrong and excuses sit temptingly close.

His methods were tested this week. Arsenal’s flight to Italy for their Champions League opener against Napoli was held up for more than five hours, forcing Arteta to scrap his pre-match press conference as the team finally landed in Naples just before 10pm local time. The preparation was shredded. The routine was gone.

The performance was not.

Arsenal ground out a 1-0 win, stretching their run to 13 straight victories in the Champions League league stage, sealed by a second-half strike from Martin Ødegaard.

For Arteta, that resilience was no accident.

“I love those challenges. I try to create them in pre-season,” he said, explaining how he deliberately builds discomfort into the calendar. “So when they happen, we already experience them and we already know. So, get to the stadium very late, change the routine as soon as the players have to do something else.”

He rattled through the scenarios that can derail a team: missed flights, delayed trains, traffic jams. His aim is simple – strip away panic.

“I don’t want the players, the staff as well, panicking,” he said. “So, when that happens, adapt to it. ‘OK, we have another two or three hours on the plane, how can we use them?’ Play together, spend some time together, sleep, use it, but certainly don’t complain and then use it as an excuse because that’s not helpful at all.”

Arteta’s reputation for unorthodox preparation is already well established. He once hired pickpockets during pre-season to jolt players’ awareness. Before a trip to Anfield, he blasted crowd noise through speakers in training to mimic the suffocating atmosphere.

Now he has gone deeper into the detail of how he conditions his squad for stress.

Asked what other tricks he has used, he listed them without hesitation. “Just delay the meals, delay the transport, take a different route. We have done many things: make the dressing room hotter, more difficult, more challenging, less [massage] beds. Those kind of things.

“Because we are going to have to adapt to different contexts and we will try to anticipate it and create the best possible conditions. But when there is that element of stress or surprise on matchday, it’s important [to be prepared].”

From Naples to the North East, the tests keep coming. Arsenal head to Sunderland on Saturday night, chasing an extension of their perfect start to the new league campaign. The Stadium of Light did not treat them kindly last season: a 2-2 draw, Leandro Trossard putting Arsenal ahead before Brian Brobbey struck late to deny them.

This time, the backdrop is different, not least in the stories of two forwards who have left the club in very different ways.

Gabriel Jesus, now at Barcelona, claimed recently: “No one told me nothing,” about his departure, saying he was made to train away from the main group before the move. Arteta’s version of events carries a different tone.

“Very surprised, to be fair, especially because with Gabriel I had an individual talk in the dressing room,” he said. “And the words that we used for each other, it was all about gratitude. So, I don’t know. It’s OK.

“Sometimes I understand when you have to deliver bad news or news that people don’t expect. Those things are reactive. Somebody has to be the bad cop; if I have to be, I have to be.”

Trossard’s exit offers a contrast. The Belgium forward joined Besiktas in July, yet was back at the Emirates last week, watching his former teammates beat Chelsea. For Arteta, that kind of return says more than any parting statement.

“What is important is normally what happens three months later, six months later,” he said. “When Trossard comes in, he’s in the dressing room with all of us, the atmosphere and the relation you have with all the players that they left, at some point their relationship has been really good. I hope that’s the same case.”

Arteta cannot control how players tell their stories once they are gone. What he can control is how those still with him respond when flights are delayed, dressing rooms are stifling and routines are shredded.

Sunderland away, under the lights, with expectations rising again, will show just how deeply that message has sunk in.